It took a five-state search, a 2 1/2 hour transport and one 66-foot long loblolly pine to move forward with a historically faithful mast for the 59-year-old skipjack Martha Lewis.
The future mast arrived via flatbed trailer from Snow Hill in Worcester County to a parking lot next to Havre de Grace‘s Frank J. Hutchins Park on a sunny Thursday afternoon, when it was unloaded in front of eager members of the Chesapeake Heritage Conservancy.
The conservancy has been raising money to fix rot and put a new mast on the oyster dredging boat. The boat is in Baltimore for some of the repairs but will return to Havre de Grace where the mast will be shaped and installed.
Striving to be historically accurate, the Havre de Grace-based conservancy searched across five states for a tree that would be tall, thick and straight enough “to shape into a mast in the traditional method of Chesapeake Bay shipwrighting,” according to an earlier statement.
